as she clasped it with her hands. At last she took the
resolve, slightly punctured me with her pin, and commenced to suck up
the blood which oozed from the place. Although she swallowed only a few
drops, the fear of weakening me soon seized her, and she carefully tied
a little band around my arm, afterward rubbing the wound with an unguent
which immediately cicatrised it. Further doubts were impossible. The
Abbe Serapion was right. Notwithstanding this positive knowledge,
however, I could not cease to love Clarimonde, and I would gladly of
my own accord have given her all the blood she required to sustain her
factitious life. Moreover, I felt but little fear of her. The woman
seemed to plead with me for the vampire, and what I had already heard
and seen sufficed to reassure me completely. In those days I had
plenteous veins, which would not have been so easily exhausted as at
present; and I would not have thought of bargaining for my blood, drop
by drop. I would rather have opened myself the veins of my arm and said
to her: 'Drink, and may my love infiltrate itself throughout thy body
together with my blood!' I carefully avoided ever making the least
reference to the narcotic drink she had prepared for me, or to the
incident of the pin, and we lived in the most perfect harmony.

Yet my priestly scruples commenced to torment me more than ever, and
I was at a loss to imagine what new penance I could invent in order to
mortify and subdue my flesh. Although these visions were involuntary,
and though I did not actually participate in anything relating to them,
I could not dare to touch the body of Christ with hands so impure and a
mind defiled by such debauches whether real or imaginary. In the effort
to avoid falling under the influence of these wearisome hallucinations,
I strove to prevent myself from being overcome by sleep. I held my
eyelids open with my fingers, and stood for hours together leaning
upright against the wall, fighting sleep with all my might; but the dust
of drowsiness invariably gathered upon my eyes at last, and finding all
resistance useless, I would have to let my arms fall in the extremity
of despairing weariness, and the current of slumber would again bear
me away to the perfidious shores. Serapion addressed me with the most
vehement exhortations, severely reproaching me for my softness and want
of fervour. Finally, one day when I was more wretched than usual, he
said to me: 'There is but one way by